Review of Shawn Colvin's 'Steady On'

Shawn Colvin is a huge fan of master songwriters Neil Finn and Bob Dylan. Without comparing her to these two, anyone so fond of such masters obviously knows the value of a good tune, and what it sounds like. For that reason alone her debut album Steady On raises certain expectations for the listener.

As if that wasn't enough it was awarded the 1989 Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Recording. Don't let that folk reference fool you - or alienate you, for that matter. While Steady On can certainly be classified as folk, it is not so removed from the mainstream sound as the award would imply. In fact the electric guitar and bass guitar are often as noticeable as Shawn Colvin's acoustic, while keyboards and drum programming are also present.

No matter what label one wants to apply to the album, though, there is really only one question to be asked: is it good? The short answer is yes. Ten songs, and not one of them bad, at least after a few listens. Definitely helping things along are Colvin's passionate vocal and acoustic guitar performances - her enthusiasm certainly adds meaning and enjoyment to all the songs and succeeds in winning the listener over.

Thus, it is somewhat unfortunate to point out that despite all this the album still has something missing from it. While none of the tracks on Steady On are bad, the reality is that not all of them are as good as they could be. The result is that some of them seem to blend in to eachother, and not in a good way either. A couple of the weaker efforts include "Cry Like An Angel" as well as the title track.

Luckily, there are some very good songs to make up for this. "Stranded" is a hauntingly beautiful love song and benefits from not being enmeshed in sound effects as some of the others are. "Shotgun Down the Avalanche" is just as strong and very thought-provoking. Then there's "Diamond in the Rough," one of the more personal songs on the album, as Colvin herself explains. "I feel very strongly identified with it," she says. "It's one of the first times I found that I really needed to scare myself everytime I wrote, to take a risk of letting some subconscious part come out of my mouth, like the lyric "snakes in the grass."

For those who may still be wondering, Steady On does not match the works of Finn or Dylan. All in all, though, Shawn Colvin's debut album clearly reveals her talent and her

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